Update: The 'Zombieland' TV Show Finds a Surprising Home

Update: Last week news hit that, after years of rumors, Zombieland was finally gearing up to move from the big screen to the small screen. What we didn't know, however, was where the series would end up. Would it go the cable route and feature the gore that made the film so delightfully R rated? Or would it go the network TV route and play up the primetime-friendly comedy instead?

Neither, it turns out.

In a surprise move, Amazon.com is actually developing the series for its streaming video service. And while we've yet to really see what an Amazon-produced TV show looks like, we're a little relieved to see that the show at least won't be hurt by having to stick to primetime TV standards and can hopefully feature the same blend of zombie killing and character humor that made the movie so much fun.

Previously:

Zombieland, the apocalyptic zombie comedy starring Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson, made over $100 million at the global box office when it was released back in 2009 – yet there’s been no sequel to date.

Rumors have floated around for the past few years that we’d get a second film chronicling Columbus (Eisenberg) and Tallahassee’s (Harrelson) continuing adventures in the wake of the zombie apocalypse, but it doesn’t appear as though that’s meant to be. Instead, it appears that rumors of a television series that first surfaced in 2011 are more likely to come to fruition, which is still a pretty awesome consolation prize. News from earlier this week seems to indicate that a Zombieland television show could be moving toward production. We’d prefer another feature film with the original film cast, but we’ll take what we can get at this point.

Website io9 writes that a casting call for the Zombieland series has recently gone out – and the people there have seen a few pages of the script potential cast members are reading for their auditions. While the finalized version of the show could look completely different from these audition pages, they do at least give us a glimpse of what the show and characters might look like.

Based on what those at the site have read, io9 believes the series will keep the tone of the film – meaning it will focus more on being irreverent and humorous than gory or terrifying. The pages reveal that the four main characters of the film (Tallahassee, Columbus, Wichita and Little Rock) will all be making the jump to the small screen – and will be very similar to their feature-film inspirations.

Tallahassee will be a little friendlier, it seems -- io9 says the script shows a closer relationship with Columbus (bonding over Seagal movies…) and a slightly more philosophical tone. Columbus, meanwhile, is largely unchanged – and the audition pages reveal he’s on a quest to find his grandparents, who turn out to be zombies.

The ladies, meanwhile, get a little more backstory in the television version – revealing that they didn’t come from the greatest of families. Naturally, the show will look to play up Columbus and Wichita’s burgeoning romance too.

All in all, we’d be interested in checking out a weekly series based on the zombie-killing exploits of these characters. We’ll have to wait and see if Zombieland gets to shoot an actual pilot, but this week's reveal is a positive step in the right direction for this potential franchise.

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